Upcoming MMO CrimeCraft was Refused Classification in Australia last Thursday. CrimeCraft is a free-to-play MMO of team-based co-operative urban combat, and was awarded a Mature rating by the ESRB in the United States, making it suitable for persons 17 years or older.

Refused-Classification.com suggests that since the ESRB’s rating did not mention drug use and there appears to be very little sexual content in the game besides skimpy clothing, it is most likely that violence has been the reason for the banning.

From the ESRB’s report:

Content descriptors:
Blood, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence

Rating summary:
This is a third-person shooter in which players can select a character and gain experience points through completion of various missions/quests. Players can roam around the fictional setting of Sunrise City and engage in several types of massively multiplayer online (MMO) games: team deathmatch, capture the flag, robbery, and free-for-all.

Players are able to shoot and kill other characters by using a wide variety of guns (handguns, shotguns, machine guns, rocket launchers) and thrown weapons (grenades, Molotov cocktails, etc.). Small splashes of red blood indicate successful hits, and bloodstains are depicted on the ground under some defeated characters.

Achievements and mission titles sometimes contain profanity (e.g., achievement called “F**king Ridiculous”; missions called “I Ain’t Movin’ B*tch,” and “Poppin’ a Cap in Yo A*s”). Players can customize female avatars so that they only wear a bra and thong-style panties or outfits that expose deep cleavage; players can also trigger a brief dance in which an avatar caresses her body.

However, if violence is the issue, then again we are forced to question the inconsistency of the Classification Board, as titles like Fallout 3, Dead Space and Mad World – all rated MA15+ for Australian audiences – contain high levels of violence that Crimecraft would surely find difficult to surpass.

We have contacted the Classification Board for comment, and will let you know of any correspondence we receive.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 8:48 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Comments on CrimeCraft Refused Classification

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   Senior Pants says:

   I wouldn’t say it was ‘inconsistent’ of the board, as the games you mentioned are not lunch Crimecraft. One is real world violence, the others are over the top fantasy.

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   Marty says:

   again we are being subjected to the morals and personal views of the individual board members. these so called members should be sent to new zealand to observe the classifcation board over there.

   in NZ when a title is refused classification they cite the legislation or relevant law (or whatever the refernce might be) and the description from the game the breaks the citation, this is called transparency apparently the good senator from adelaide has no idea what this is and is crusading like the good senator (now barred from practicing law) jack tomphson.

   australia does not need to become a nanny state, opps, i think we are already there!!!

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   Matt says:

   It will be interesting to see how they intend to police this, since free-to-play MMOs don’t actually have a point of sale, and generally support distribution via BitTorrent as well as direct download. Online games didn’t even get a rating from the OFLC until last month.

   As we all know, the system is a farce.

   @Senior Pants, how about Modern Warfare 2?

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   Glenn says:

   PALGN reports that the game was actually rejected due to the “fictional representation of drugs”. Smells like Fallout 3.